Beautiful Stranger
by Grey Bard
Summary: An uplifting and gloriously dark moment courtesy of the episode "Bug's Life"


Beautiful Stranger Author: Grey Bard  
Pairing: J/A of course!  
Category: Romance, Song fic  
Rating: PG-13 for mature ideas  
Spoilers: "Bug's Life"  
Disclaimer: (to the tune of "We Wish you a Merry Christmas")  
Please, please please please please  
don't sue me,  
I am aware  
They're not mine,  
No money was made on this,  
for I'm not Sci Fi 

Oh Mr. Rockne, please forgive me,  
This is done in love for your exquisite show!  
--------------------------------

I remember the first time I saw you. You were scared and angry as anything  
and I still thought I was hallucinatng, but the first time our eyes met I  
felt something. A shock of, I don't know, recognition. Not love at first  
sight, don't get me wrong; I was scared of you, but something else too.  
Dmned if I know what it was. All I know is that p.o.ed and hot eyed and  
sweaty with adrenaline you were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  
And nothing was ever the same again.

I have never felt this way. Not like this. Not this combination of fear and  
pain and loneliness and respect and sheer animal attraction. There is no one  
like you, Aeryn. No one else has ever been able to put you out of my mind,  
not even for a minute, I mean microt. Believe me, it's been tried. No one  
else is ever you, so no one else is ever enough. You're amazing. Intelligent  
and honorable, vulnerable and oddly gentle, but none of that makes you less  
dangerous, not even for a moment. There is something feral about your  
wariness, about the way you move like the hunter you are; lithe and smooth  
like some magnificent savannah predator, deadly but magnetic. That caution  
might have seemed ridiculous back before, paranoid even, but all the rules  
have changed.

Somehow a little of the attraction comes from the danger. Something in you  
calls to a part of me I'd never even suspected existed. The universe has  
taken on sharp edges, and suddenly everything matters because of you. You  
woke something up in me. Something old and strong and fiercely greedy for  
living now that it's tasted a good thing. I think I've snarled more in the  
time I've known you than in all the rest of my life put together.

Do you know what it's like to have always known what you were and what you  
are doing, be good at it and suddenly have it mean next to nothing? Yeah, I  
guess you do. It's just... I was a grown man at the top of my field with a  
brilliant future ahead of me and now so little I've done, so little I know  
means anything here!

But it isn't the whole displacement thing that got to me, it was you. Even  
being spacewarped through unknown millions of light years wouldn't have  
changed me the way you have. This all would have been one big thrill ride on  
the way home, but now Earth isn't home. Not really. Because of you. Because  
of us. Because there's little joy in kiddie rides after a rollercoaster.  
Because... Aww, frell. Who am I fooling? Because even my pride isn't  
worth losing you, and Earth is no place for a Sebacean. Not forever.

I've killed because of you, and to be honest, I'm still not sure how to  
deal with that. I don't mean that poor medtech that got in the way of the  
virus. I mean Larraque and the virus together. I killed a man in cold blood,  
and you know what? I didn't hate it.

In fact, it felt kinda good. Because you know what? When I blew up that  
Marauder ship I wasn't thinking about that medtech the virus had used me to  
kill, or poor Larraque trapped by the virus just like I had been. Hll, I  
wasn't even thinking about saving the universe from the virus. That all came  
later. All my mind could see was his knife in your gut and his leering  
smile, and all I knew was that he had to pay. And it felt good.

I'm not a killer, Aeryn. No, that's not true. I wasn't a killer. Because  
it was my finger on that button. Because if it had to have been it would  
have been my hand on the knife or the trigger. Because I would do it again  
in a heartbeat. And I probably will have to.

And for all my pain and guilt, part of me still exults in it. And yeah, I  
look closer at faces now, and I don't like to sit with my back to a crowd  
offship. I never forget to check for exits, I always have a lie ready.

Maybe what I'm trying to say is at heart, we're not that much different,  
are we, anymore? And we're getting even less so. Belonging to both peace and  
war, locked into what we are by each other. And that feral part of me? It  
doesn't mind the idea of a mated pair of hunters, covering each other's  
backs and fending off the world.

It's not safe. It's not sane. It would have seemed totally alien to me  
before I met you. But you know what? I kind of like it.


End file.
